Blog

The Cluster: Demo of Hunting AI and New Models

This post is about The Cluster, my 2.5D
platform game under development with focus on non-linear exploration,
set in a big, continuous world. You can read all the posts about The Cluster here.

Like I wrote about a few weeks ago I've been working on pathfinding and AI for the enemies in The Cluster. The AI pathfinding is now reasonably stable and there's a working demo below where you can fight against simple hunting enemies. Right now the enemies always know where the player is; later the knowledge of most enemies will be made less global and more based on local memory.

I've also been working on some new character models and animations. The new animations in particular bring the player avatar and enemies a lot more alive! Even though I'm a complete amateur as an animator, the crude animations I've made still make the character a lot more fun to watch, I think. :)

Here is a simple playable demo of the current state of the game (requires Unity plug-in):

Controls: Arrows to run, Ctrl to jump, Alt to shoot fireballs.

Again, this demo is just a "tech demo" and features no way to win. It extends infinitely to the right. Enemies should be able to chase the player almost everywhere, but they can't pass the checkpoints (the white monuments).

Like I wrote about before, I'm still not sure what gameplay elements would be best at making agile enemies like these the most fun in a platform game. Have a go at the demo above and then let me know if you have some ideas for how to make this gameplay more fun!

2 comments:

Very cool! The camera feels far too tight on the action (but I realize this is a tech demo at this point).I just stumbled across your project and haven't actually read any of your posts yet :) but I'm pretty impressed at what you have right now!

@Adam: Thanks! The camera distance now is pretty similar to many classic platform games. You could see a much larger aea in Mario, but in e.g. Sonic it was much the same as here. However, I think I'll let the camera distance vary dependent on how much of the sorroundings you need to see at a given point.